Steve Kuncewicz, Social Media & The Law

As our fourth session at The Juice Academy approached, we were excited to learn that social media lawyer, Steve Kuncewicz, would be guest lecturing. Steve has won numerous awards within his sector and has the biggest Twitter following of any lawyer in Manchester, so naturally, we were very excited to hear from him and learn all about the implications of online law.

We started the session off with a task. In groups of two and three, we were asked to create our own independent agency, complete with values and goals. We then had to consider five different scenarios and create a plan for how we would manage and deal with them effectively. The overall aim was to present an in-depth analysis of how we would deal with each scenario back to Steve and the class.

As a team, we decided that if we couldn’t find an effective solution for each scenario, we would look for and research an alternative for our fictional customer. A good example of this is the situation we were given around crowd-sourced images: if a company came to us asking whether they could use images they had found online for a campaign, instead of giving them a straight “No”, we suggested asking the image owners for permission, or purchasing stock images to avoid copyright constraints.

After our presentation, Steve talked us through each scenario and explained why it is essential for a digital company to consider the law, and the consequences that might occur if things like copyright laws are overlooked. This gave us a greater understanding of how important it is to be thorough in our day-to-day jobs when operating and making decisions on behalf of a client or brand.

Finally, Steve talked through all the logistics of social media law which really made it clear for everyone what we can and can’t do online. He gave us some examples of high-profile cases he has dealt with personally, which were especially interesting as it gave us an insight into repercussions that have come about from the law being overlooked in the past. I personally learnt just how ruthless copyright laws can be and how important it is to stick to the required guidelines – especially in my job at Tangerine which involves me researching online content for recognised clients such as Amir Khan and Reebok.

Overall, Steve’s session was fascinating as very few of us were aware of how strict digital law is beforehand. I for one will certainly take a lot of knowledge from this session to utilise in my job, especially as authorities are increasingly looking to crackdown on people who break the law online.